ting. He delayed until, on the 14th of August, Cornwallis arrived
at Camden with reinforcements and with the fixed resolve to attack Gates
before Gates attacked him. On the early morning of the 16th of August,
Cornwallis with two thousand men marching northward between swamps on
both flanks, met Gates with three thousand marching southward, each of
them intending to surprise the other. A fierce struggle followed. Gates
was completely routed with a thousand casualties, a thousand prisoners,
and the loss of nearly the whole of his guns and transport. The fleeing
army was pursued for twenty miles by the relentless Tarleton. General
Kalb, who had done much to organize the American army, was killed. The
enemies of Gates jeered at his riding away with the fugitives and hardly
drawing rein until after four days he was at Hillsborough, two hundred
miles away. His defense was that he "proceeded with all possible
despatch," which he certainly did, to the nearest point where he could
reorganize his forces. His career was, however, ended. He was deprived
of his command, and Washington appointed to succeed him General
Nathanael Greene.

In spite of the headlong flight of Gates the disaster at Camden had only
a transient effect. The war developed a number of irregular leaders on
the American side who were never beaten beyond recovery, no matter what
might be the reverses of the day. The two most famous are Francis Marion
and Thomas Sumter. Marion, descended from a family of Huguenot exiles,
was slight in frame and courteous in manner; Sumter, tall, powerful, and
rough, was the vigorous frontiersman in type. Threatened men live
long: Sumter died in 1832, at the age of ninety-six, the last surviving
general of the Revolution. Both men had had prolonged experience in
frontier fighting against the Indians. Tarleton called Marion the "old
swamp fox" because he often escaped through using by-paths across the
great swamps of the country. British communications were always in
danger. A small British force might find itself in the midst of a host
which had suddenly come together as an army, only to dissolve next day
into its elements of hardy farmers, woodsmen, and mountaineers.

After the victory at Camden Cornwallis advanced into North Carolina, and
sent Major Ferguson, one of his most trusted officers, with a force
of about a thousand men, into the mountainous country lying westward,
chiefly to secure Loyalist recruits. If attacked in forc